REPORTS

Audits of published clinical research

Reports are identified by an ACE ID (project, year, and report number, e.g. ACE2026001) and are available online and as a PDF. Corrections and author responses are incorporated into new versions and recorded in each report’s version history. See About for the evidence standard behind every finding and Disclaimers for the editorial and correspondence policy.

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ACE2026002 10.5281/zenodo.23331178

Audit of Singh et al. (1997)

A randomized controlled trial of progressive resistance training in depressed elders

Older Adults Exercise Depression RCT
110 integrity violations Infected 440 articles 77 reviews 4 guidelines
Abstract
This report audits a randomized controlled trial by Singh, Clements, and Fiatarone that compared 10 weeks of progressive resistance training with an attention control condition in 32 community-dwelling adults aged 60 and over with major depression, minor depression, or dysthymia. Every table in the article labels the values reported in parentheses as standard deviations, yet the Methods state that they are standard errors. The article's test statistic values support the Methods (i.e., the parenthetical values are standard errors). The reported age ranges are impossible under the reported standard deviations. Additionally, the depression subgroup means in Table 4 are impossible under the whole-group standard deviations in Table 3. The largest post-test standardized mean difference that the article can support on any depression outcome is −0.72. We located 24 meta-analyses that report a study-level effect size for this trial. Of these, 19 meta-analyses assign @singh1997 a value larger than any possibly correct extraction of the effect size. The median assigned value is −2.74 and the largest is −5.04. Four report exactly −1.75, which is due to meta-analysts treating the parenthetical values of the BDI scores as standard deviations. One of these meta-analyses is a Cochrane review. Furthermore, five of the 10 categorical baseline p values can not be reproduced by any standard test of the reported contingency table cells. Later in the paper there is a reported subgroup mean that is impossible given its sample size. In total, this audit identifies 110 instances of Research Integrity Violations across two categories. Due to the pervasive contamination the misreporting has had on the evidence syntheses in this field, we recommend retraction.
PublishedOct 12, 2026
UpdatedOct 12, 2026
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Retraction recommended
ACE2026001 10.5281/zenodo.22780329

Audit of Abdelbasset et al. (2019)

Three randomized controlled trials on exercise and depression

Heart Disease Exercise Depression RCT
29 integrity violations Infected 74 articles 17 reviews 22 guidelines
Abstract
This report audits three randomized controlled trials by Abdelbasset and colleagues evaluating exercise interventions for depression in patients with congestive heart failure. The three articles appear to report overlapping arms from the same underlying clinical trial while presenting them as separate studies. Across the articles, duplicated baseline characteristics and PHQ-9 outcome statistics indicate reuse of the same trial data even though the articles report incompatible authorship contribution statements and three distinct ethical approval numbers, and do not cite one another. The articles are potentially linked to a well-documented authorship-for-sale publication network. Furthermore, one of the three articles identifies Abdelbasset as both first author and editor which is a clear conflict of interest. Reported summary statistics are impossible given a real data set, specifically, seven of nine PHQ-9 (the primary outcome) mean and standard deviation pairs fail GRIMMER consistency tests. The baseline tables report probability values that cannot be correct, including two different values for a single two-group comparison of a binary variable, while the continuous comparisons in the same tables reproduce exactly. The reported outcomes also imply extreme between-group standardized mean differences of approximately three standard deviations at post-intervention, making the studies highly influential outliers in later meta-analyses. In total, this audit identifies 29 instances of Research Integrity Violations across seven categories. We conclude that the three articles are not credible and are unlikely to contain any evidentiary value thus we recommend retraction by the publishing journals.
PublishedSep 13, 2026
UpdatedSep 20, 2026
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Retraction recommended
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